Brendan Rodgers hopes Celtic show their true personality in Paris

BRENDAN Rodgers recoiled ever-so-slightly at the perception put to him that his midweek trip to Paris was, in football terms, a free hit.

After all, this is a city, and in PSG a football club, in which the word free is rarely used; however, the result here does not matter, not really, because this Champions League group is all about Anderlecht in a fortnight’s time.

Should the Belgians, who have failed to score a goal never mind pick up a point, lose at home to Bayern Munich on Wednesday, then all Celtic would have to do is not be beaten 4-0 by the team sitting below them to reach the Europa League knock-out stage.

Before all that comes Neymar and PSG who produced maybe the greatest performance by a visiting side at Celtic Park when they won 5-0.

The problem Rodgers has with the term free hit is that he believes that his Celtic team can go to the French capital and come away with something. They will need to play out of their skin to get close to PSG but that is what their manager wants to see.

He does not want to watch normally confident players feel as if they don’t belong on the same pitch as some genuine world-class talent.

Asked what success would be, Rodgers said: “Just the personality of the team and how we play and having confidence. At this level, it’s not so much about the possession you have, it’s about dangerous possession. There are going to be long spells when you don’t have the ball – but can you be dangerous with it?

“Can you show the personality and confidence to show you belong on that stage? That’s what I always look for, it’s what I looked for in the first game.

"These teams, PSG and Bayern Munich are expected to go all the way in the competition. So realistically it is tough for us. Wednesday is about can we play our game and improve. You get that with personality. That’s a measure I would look at.

"It's hard to call it that [free hit] as a manager. You go into it and you always have a belief that you can get something from the game. It's a big challenge for us again and the experience will be great for a lot of our players.

“We'll go there to try and get a result, even though in their league and in Europe, they have been hammering teams. That's the reality, but we have to find a way to try and get something.”

Do Celtic lack belief? Perhaps, when it comes to the likes of Bayern and PSG, in the way Hamilton Accies and Kilmarnock players probably do when they are standing next to Scott Brown, Kieran Tierney and Moussa Dembele.

“Belief is one of the biggest things at that level,” said Rodgers. “People like [Edinson] Cavani and [Kylian] Mbappe have a belief that they are top players and in the biggest games they want to show it and that's what they do.

"It's the constant job for me to convince ours that we can compete at that level. In our last game against Bayern Munich we showed that. It's difficult for players at times to do that but it's my job to convince them to go and be competitive and do their very best, which, in the main, our lot do.”

Celtic played well against Bayern in Glasgow and while it would be stretching it to say they were unfortunate to lose, for long spells the Scottish champions were the better side and had they drawn, or had even sneaked a win, the German would have few complaints,

“We performed very well in that game but didn't get the result, so there's bits to learn from that,” said Rodgers. “There were a lot of great moments in that game, but our frustration was from when we scored, there was three minutes, and in that gap what's so important in the 10 minutes after you score is you keep the ball as much as you can and that was our only downfall.

“We gave everything in the game, we defended well, we came from being behind and got level and with 15 minutes to go we have a great chance of getting a result but for the three minutes after we scored we gave the ball away three times and didn't press as hard as we normally would and then all of a sudden you are 2-1 behind, so that's the lessons that we are finding out all the time.”

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